Jo Clayton: Shadowplay

When they were finished, he clapped politely, then straightened up and moved away from the water's edge. "I imagine you're getting rather bored with this… ah… solitude. Where's the Hunter?"

Suddenly wary, though she was careful not to show it, Shadith got to her feet. "You said it, bored. He's off nosing around the swamp." She reached for the nest of muddaubers she'd located in case of trouble. "He'll be back before dark. Probably not much before." She felt Miowee's eyes on her, but she wasn't worried about the streetsinger fumbling a cue. Or Kaya-the girl had learned before she could walk to smell trouble and keep her head down.

Kiscomaskin inspected Miowee as she set the kitskew on the trunk beside her and reached for its case; Shadith felt him decide the cripple was nothing he should worry about. "Too bad. I was hoping to make a sweep of you all." He slid his hand beneath his coat and brought out a small quickfirer…

… and before he got off a shot, Miowee put a bullet through his head, using the pistol in the kitskew case. "Shadow," her voice was a harsh rasp, "any more of them?"

"He wouldn't bring witnesses."

"Don't give me logic. Are there any more?"

Shadith loosed the daubers and made a quick sweep around the island; she caught a distant hint of Rohantcoming back for lunch as usual. Not as usual when he gets here and sees what dropped in. Shikwakola, too. Watching. More of them. Not good. No one else. Mee can let her hormones rest.

"Rohant's coming in, no strangers around," she said wearily. "At least we have transport, courtesy of that." She waved a hand at the corpse. "Has to be a flit back there, or a boat. We'll need it, the shikwakola about ready to pop. Better to go before they do-if we had any idea where to go."

Kikun looked at her, moved quietly off into the trees.

Kayataki had her legs pulled up and her thin arms wrapped round her knees; she was a little paler than usual and she was carefully not-looking at the dead man, the man her mother had killed. She was too calm. Shadith read emptiness in her. Seven years old and she'd seen more death and torment than men ten times her age.

Like the child, Shadith was feeling nothing. No revulsion. No regret. Not even anger. Not any more. Not at Ginny, not at the people running this world, not at Fate or Luck or whatever it was that ran the universe. She was worn out. She went over to the dead man, stirred him with the toe of her boot in his ribs. "Why?" she said after a while. "I don't understand. Why?"

"Weyy-ah, I don't know." Having broken the gun down, Miowee was cleaning and oiling it. "I could guess. You're too hard to control. Like trying to hold a live kilifish. It keeps squirting out of your fingers no matter how tight your grip. He'd get more mileage out of you dead, especially if he could lay the blame for killing you on the Nistam." She inspected the barrel, gave it a last wipe, and began reassembling the weapon. "He can't do what the Makh Hen did; he'd have to coax you and that wouldn't work, would it? The three of you've made no secret about wanting to go home, wherever it is you call home." She put the gun in the case, snapped the latches and set the case on a clump of grass beside the trunk. "Kaya, you all right?" She reached down, stroked her daughter's hair. "Home, child a mine, the man goin home," she sang softly, her voice in its lowest notes, caressing yet remote. "Walkin the hard way, the long way, walkin on stones he pile up hisself…" She began humming and plucking single notes from the strings.

After a while, her voice shaking, then gaining strength, Kayataki took up the chorus: Walkin home, walking home.

"Home, child a mine, the man going home," Miowee sang, repeated the phrase, Kayataki blending with her, child soprano light and pure, woman contralto, worn, ragged, as powerful as it was let to be. "A long way, a hard way on the shells of his hurts…"

The song went on and on, adding travails to Kiscomaskin's route to redemption until Miowee laughed, ruffled Kaya's hair, laughed again as Kikun was suddenly there, handing her a mug of hot tea.

After they rolled Kiscomaskin into the water for the slithers to feed on, they sat and drank tea and ate stale biscuits and waited for Rohant to get back so, they could argue out what was best for them to do.

They were still arguing when the Na-priests came for them.

Cursing with concentrated malevolence, his voice a shrill whine that sent the Pet shuddering onto the back of the Chair where it sat with its hands pressed over its ears, Ginbiryol Seyirshi watched Shadith and Kikun roll Kiscomaskin's body into the murky water. He glanced at Ajeri, saw her shudder (absurdly like the Pet) and fix her eyes on her magazine; she was too afraid of him to open her mouth, but he knew she was dreading a Praisesong with him in this mood. That gave him a savage satisfaction which was momentarily pleasing, but he knew it wasn't prudent; he needed her. He didn't like it, he loathed the truth in it, but he considered himself above all a practical man. He made a note to start looking for candidates to replace her and Puk, then went back to wrestling with the current crisis.

When he had his rage under control, he touched a sensor, gave a set of coordinates to the listener below, and followed with sour satisfaction the arrival of the Na-priests.

The days rolled on. The EYEs continued to collect scenes and send them to the satellites which fed them to Ginbiryol while a third of the world's population poured into Wapaskwen-only a third because the Pakoseo fervor dissipated considerably as it reached the more ratified levels of power; the crowd of pilgrims was heavily weighted toward Maka and Tanak with a salting of Kawas and Kisar and a very few Pliciks. There was a complex web of consinships, of shared attitudes, most of all a shared hatred of the Plicik AUTHORITY and all the brightsider priests who collaborated with that AUTHORITY to wring everything possible from the low, to pile the chains on the workers and keep them on. There was kinship and a common history, a common enemy. Perhaps because of this, perhaps because there were whole families, infants to grandmothers, walking together, perhaps because the Pakoseo fervor exhausted them, the immense throng was extraordinarily peaceful. Elbow to elbow they marched without much clashing; there were a few fights, none with weapons, a few screaming matches curiously muted and soon over, nothing more.

In Wapaskwen, especially in Aina'iril, the Five fought a chaotic battle. The city was burning and Mohecopa's fieldcorps were scattered along the Pilgrim Road, most of them impossible to contact. The few kipaos left in the city retreated to their blockhouses and ignored whatever happened in the streets.

Makwahkik's death was proving one of the Five's larger mistakes. The kanaweh had slipped beyond anyone's control; in addition to their nightly raids on the Quarters, individual kana were breaking into armories, taking flits and going on killing sprees among the Pilgrims, concentrating on Maka and Tanak groups but not worrying where their stray shots went; others were looting Kawa storehouses, even some Kisar compounds; shrines were losing their votive tokens, the gold and jeweled bits, and what the raiders didn't take, they destroyed and desecrated. The Gospah Ayawit tried to calm them and reinstate discipline, but they wouldn't listen to him and beat or shot the Na-priests he sent out to them. The Nistam didn't bother trying; he stayed in the Kiceota behind rank on rank of Royal Guards and puttered in his garden. For the most part, the other Pliciks were cheering the kanaweh on, only having second thoughts when their own houses got singed.

Ginbiryol tasted, dumped, selected, saved, excised, drowning his anger in the flood of satisfaction at the savagery and chaos below, in the familiar, comfortable work of compiling his images, the anticipation of the final cut, the pulling together of those images into a unified work of art, that final satisfaction that was greater than any other.